Erika Dreifus

Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.

On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”

The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

• This week has brought us the second installment of Ruben Quesada’s revived “Poetry Today” series on the Kenyon Review blog.
• Ron Charles enumerates “11 Trends that Changed the Way We Read this Decade.” You may want to examine how many of them have changed the way you read (or write). (I’m beginning to wonder if I’m ever going to join the audiobook trend.)
• Caught via AWP’s Twitter account: “Help us honor those generous individuals making exceptional contributions to the literary community today. Nominate another writer for #AWPSPOTLIGHT. New this winter: Nominators can now choose to interview their nominee. http://bit.ly/2LL0HMg.”
• Via Writer’s Digest/Robert Lee Brewer: an extremely useful list of 100 common publishing terms.
• And over on the My Machberet blog, you’ll find a fresh set of Jewish lit links.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.